by Jake Logan
In the words of somebody-or-other, killing was too good for this pipsqueak.
So he let Billy and Lydia yell more nasty things at each other, let Lydia coax Billy into a false sense of security as to Slocum’s status, until he was within thirty feet of that rock.
He squeezed the trigger.
Billy’s hat went flying and he got off a shot in response, but it went wild. A surprised look frozen on his face, he fell to his knees, then forward, splat out on the ground.
Lydia popped up—all the way to her feet, this time.
“Did you get him?” she demanded. “Is he dead?”
“Hope not,” Slocum said, and got to his feet. “And get the hell down, Lydia, till I see if he’s within reach of his gun.”
She didn’t budge. She pointed. “It went way over there.”
He saw it. He nodded. He turned, yanked the rope off Tubac’s saddle and his rifle from the boot and proceeded to walk out to Billy.
He was only halfway there when Lydia cried, “You’re hurt!”
“Told you I was,” he said over his shoulder. But he said it with a grin. Billy looked to be all the way out of it, but still breathing. His torso softly rose and fell with each breath.
Slocum kept the nose of his rifle pointed at him, anyway.
“And stay there, damn it,” he called as he came to a stop over Billy’s body. He heard weeds rustle as Lydia returned to her roost, and without thinking, grinned again.
Billy’s skull was creased right along the back, about a half inch down from where Slocum had been aiming. It was a pretty fair shot with a Colt, he thought, especially for a twice-shot man trying to lie flat in the weeds.
Still, he could have done it better.
But it wasn’t like he could do it over again, so he merely stuck the rifle’s barrel under Billy and levered him over onto his back.
Out cold.
“That’s a good little gunslinger,” Slocum muttered, and began to tie him up.
17
Charlie Frame trudged on at a dull jog.
His legs, unaccustomed to traveling afoot, were about to give out and his shoulder was killing him. He had dropped, in fact, everything he carried but his food and water. The only thing keeping him going now was the sheer hatred that a certain kind of man develops when he imagines he’s been humiliated beyond comprehension.
And that’s exactly what Charlie figured had happened to him.
The baby, and the mine, had ceased to be a glittering possibility. They had become his by rights, snatched from him when his back was turned. That it wasn’t his baby, or his mine—or that his back hadn’t been turned at all—no longer occurred to him.
Slocum deserved to die for taking that kid away, and Billy Cree deserved no less a death for thinking he was better than Charlie Frame.
Goddamn it, anyway! Better? No man was better than Charlie Frame!
The facts of the matter didn’t bother Charlie too much. They never had. He was too bent on himself and what he could get out of any particular situation. Even the thought of Ed, far behind by now, hurt, alone, and abandoned, was far from his mind.
What was a lousy brother compared to a fortune and sweet revenge?
Charlie, despite the heat, despite his weary legs and his throbbing shoulder, smiled.
And then he stopped, stock-still.
Gunshots echoed through the air. He couldn’t tell where it came from by the sounds of it. There were too many twists and turns in here, and the sounds bounced too many ways. But he knew the sounds could only have come from one direction. Ahead, no matter how many twists and turns there were to it.
His legs filled with a new charge of energy, he broke into a dead run, the water bag slapping, unfelt, at his back.
And strangely enough, he was praying, praying that Billy Creed had polished off that goddamn Slocum for good. Then there’d be only one for him to settle things with.
’Course, there’d only be one, any way a fellow looked at it, wouldn’t there?
Then they really began tearing it up. Six shots, real fast!
Charlie moved as fast as his tired legs would carry him, which was with surprising speed. His breath came in huge gulps and pants, and he felt that his heart would pound out of his chest and his lungs would burst, but still he ran and ran and ran.
And then, much closer now, he heard a single shot.
He nearly tripped and fell smack on his face, he stopped so fast.
It had sounded like the last of a gunfight to him. Somebody had won, he’d put his money on that. But which one?
“You ain’t gonna find out if you stand here all day,” he muttered between pants. Steeling himself, forgetting even to grab himself a quick gulp of water, he took off at a long-legged lope.
A few minutes later, utterly breathless, Charlie stopped and bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. And while he was in that position, nose to knees, he heard something.
A horse?
Yes, indeed! It wasn’t a mirage or a trick of the mind. There was a real-life bay pony standing maybe a hundred yards off. Saddled and bridled, too!
It took him a second to realize it was the spare that Billy Cree had been leading.
“Sonofabitch!” Charlie wheezed, then tried to laugh and coughed instead. “Son of a goddamn bitch!”
He set off toward it.
Except the damned horse didn’t want to be caught. Once he got within three feet of snagging a rein, the blasted thing suddenly wheeled and trotted away.
But Charlie was bent on going the rest of the way astride. He didn’t give a thought to taking the horse back and picking up Ed. No, his intention, and his only thought, was to get a grip on that goddamn bangtail and go barreling after Billy Cree or Slocum, whichever one had come out on top, and to lay his hands on the baby and its mine.
“Nice horse,” he whispered as he crept up on it again. “Good horse. Once I get my hands on you,” he soothed, “I’m gonna have you turned into glue.”
Again, the horse skittered away, then stopped about fifty yards away.
“Goddamn it!” Charlie breathed, and started toward it all over again.
Slocum sat still, albeit unwillingly, while Lydia bandaged his shoulder.
“Ain’t necessary,” he said for at least the tenth time. “It’s just a scratch.”
“I’ll be the judge of what is and isn’t a scratch, Slocum,” Lydia said crossly, although he could tell by her tone that she was joshing. “My Lord, is your hobby getting yourself banged up? I’ve never seen so many scars in my life on one person. Not even on ten people, combined!”
He chuckled, low. “Just unlucky, that’s all.”
“No,” she said, “pretty gosh-darned lucky, if I’m any judge. At least half of these wounds would have killed another man.”
He cast his eye toward the horses, where Billy Cree lay, unconscious and trussed like a Christmas goose. Still no movement.
“I been told that before,” he replied. “Suppose folks are right. I’m beginnin’ to feel like one great big hunk of scar tissue, though.”
Lydia stood up and dusted her hands. “You can put your shirt back on, now,” she said, shaking her pretty head. “You are one tough bird, Slocum.”
“Been told that, too,” he said with a smile. “Like usual, folks are probably right.” He shrugged his sleeve back on, although carefully. That scratch still stung like Hades. “ ’Cept they usually put an ‘old’ in there, before the bird part.”
Lydia, grinning, snorted softly. “We ready to go now?”
“Soon’s I get Billy there loaded up on a horse,” he said, and swatted at a bee. He missed.
She looked disappointed. “Why load him up? I thought we could just drag him.”
“By God, Lydia, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were bloodthirsty.”
She cocked her head. “You know what they say about a woman scorned, Slocum? Well, that’s nothing compared to a woman wronged. Hell would be a paradise compared to what I
’d like to do to that scum you’ve got trussed up over there.”
“Remind me never to wrong you, Lydia,” he said, one eyebrow raised. “Even in the tiniest way. Hate to get on your bad side.”
And then he remembered, belatedly, exactly what Billy Cree had done to get on Lydia’s bad side, and he said, “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean that like it sounded. I wouldn’t blame you if you were to take my gun and shoot the bastard through the head, instead of just grazin’ it, like I did.”
She merely sighed and said, “Let’s get on with it, Slocum. The sooner we get his backside in a jail cell, the better.”
Slocum heaved Billy up and slung him across his pinto’s saddle with some difficulty. Billy was smallish and fairly lightweight, but his body pressed on Slocum’s twice-wounded shoulder.
He tied Billy’s bound hands to one stirrup and then passed the rope under the horse’s belly, through the other stirrup, and around his bound boots. And then, for added security, he ran the rope through Billy’s belt at the side, and tied it snugly to the saddle horn with a breakaway knot.
“That ought to hold you, you little bastard,” he muttered, and gave Billy’s thigh a sharp pop with his hand.
The baby had started crying again, and Lydia was pacing up and down, singing softly to him to no avail.
“What’s that matter with him?” he asked.
“Good question,” Lydia replied. “He doesn’t need changing. I checked. And he was fed not that long ago. I think it’s just getting to him, Slocum. I know it’s gotten to me, being out here for so long.” She lowered her face and nuzzled the crying Tyler. “Poor baby, poor tyke,” she said softly.
“Well, let’s give him what he wants,” Slocum said, and led one of the spare horses over to her. “I’ll be mighty glad to get into a town, too.”
He held out his arms for the squalling baby so that Lydia could mount. He watched her skirts swishing over her shapely backside as she swung a leg over the horse. “Mighty glad,” he repeated.
“When’s the last time you were in Cross Point?” she asked as she took the baby from him.
Slocum shrugged. “I don’t know. Three, maybe four years ago. Why?”
“I think you’ll find it changed,” she said, gathering the reins in her free hand. “I was last there about seven or eight months ago. Their silver’s petering out. It was still a fair-sized town, but only about half as big as it used to be.”
“Makes sense,” Slocum said. He straightened out the spare horse’s lead rope and Billy’s horse’s lead, then swung a leg over Tubac. “They got the river comin’ up for about a mile’s worth down there, but the soil’s bad for farming. Dirt doesn’t grow enough grass for ranching, either. Without the silver for a lure, can’t see as how many folks would want to live there.”
He clucked to Tubac and the horse moved out, the others bringing up the rear. Lydia jogged up alongside him, then slowed to a walk to keep pace. Over the baby’s cries, she said, “I hope you’re right. I mean, you probably are. When I was there last, folks had enough truck gardens growing along the riverbanks to feed them for a little while. Just hope the sheriff’s still hanging around.”
Slocum reached across the space between them and briefly gripped her forearm. In this heated world of dry, hard things, it felt like cool silk.
“Don’t fret, honeylamb,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the crying baby. “If there ain’t any sheriff, I’ll take Billy Cree on to someplace where there is one. He’s gonna get what’s comin’ to him. You can count on that.”
He meant it, too.
Exhausted and wheezing, Charlie Frame finally cornered the bay, and gave it a hit upside the head, once he had the reins firmly in his grip.
The horse half-reared, but Charlie hung on, then tightened the girth and climbed up into the saddle. He gave that pony a kick and took off at a gallop.
He supposed he knew why Billy had let that horse loose. He was close to town. He wouldn’t need two, and leading the bay would have slowed him down. ’Course, Charlie couldn’t figure why he’d left the saddle and bridle on it. Well, who was he to judge? The fact was that Billy had abandoned the horse, and it was now his. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, wasn’t it?
He slowed down and stopped at the top of the shallow rise from which Billy Cree had ridden down on Slocum and Lydia, his guns blazing.
Charlie’s guns weren’t blazing though, and—for the moment, anyway—he wasn’t trying to catch Slocum and Lydia. Screwing up his face, he watched as the back ends of their horses plodded off into the distance.
He had no doubt about who had won the gun battle that he’d heard. It was Slocum. You couldn’t mistake the rump of that Appaloosa horse of his. And there was a man-sized bundle tied over the saddle of Billy Cree’s pinto.
The thin sound of a far-off baby crying carried on the wind.
“Goddamn sonofabitch!” Charlie huffed, and choked on his words. He hadn’t started out in the best of shape, and the gallop had left him breathless.
After a fit of coughing, during which he was sure he’d cough up his spleen any second, he refrained from further words until he’d taken a long drink of water.
And even then, he didn’t speak.
Just you wait, Slocum, he thought angrily. Just you wait.
He sat there until he could no longer see Slocum and Lydia, which wasn’t much of a trick. They had turned left, into another warren of hill and valley and canyon. But he sat until he was breathing even again. And then he coaxed the horse beneath him into a walk.
He’d catch them, all right, he thought as he rode slowly along. He’d catch up to them in town, and wouldn’t they be surprised to see him! Especially when he announced to the sheriff that the man who’d ridden in with that baby was the one-and-only Slocum, a dog if ever there was one.
Why, he’d say that he was the baby’s rightful uncle! He’d say that Slocum and Lydia had kidnapped it while he was on a mission of mercy to save it, and that they wouldn’t turn loose of it for beans. Plus which, they’d shot up him and his poor brother, who was still up in the hills.
For the first time in a good long while, Charlie smiled. Why, if this one worked out, he might just switch from being a man of action to being a man of many lies! ’Course, he was already that, but it didn’t stop him from daydreaming.
And they weren’t that far ahead. They were going slow. He’d likely make town right after they did. His water bag was lighter, now, too. That would help.
Still plodding, he rummaged in his things for his food sack, pulled out the last of the corn dodgers he’d hidden from his brother and the tail end of his jerky, and tossed their wrappers to the desert floor behind him.
Chewing, he marched on.
18
Ed Frame had found a surprising new well of energy about a half an hour after his brother, Charlie, left. He wasn’t certain where it had come from, although if he’d thought about it long and hard, he might have decided that its roots were in desperation.
He hadn’t made very good time. Not nearly so good as Charlie was likely to be able to make. But he had limped and dragged himself a good mile. Now, he sat in the feeble shade of the low cliff face, toying with his tourniquet and drinking warm water from one of the canteens.
It was just like Charlie to take the water bag and leave him with two lousy canteens, wasn’t it?
Well, Charlie was Charlie. Ed guessed he couldn’t help it, just the same as he couldn’t help killing that Mr. Tyler and going after the baby. Just like he couldn’t help but kill Sam Jeffords over a card game last year, and that farmer, whatshisname, the year before that.
Ed had sort of liked that farmer. His wife had cooked them a good meal, too. Didn’t seem quite fair when Charlie plugged him in the back just to get his old roan riding horse.
But Ed hadn’t said anything.
He never said much of anything, really.
Charlie complained about not being as famous as Billy Cree, and he was sort of right. Ed th
ought that with all the killings that Charlie had done, Charlie really ought to be celebrated. ’Course, Charlie cut his own legs out from under himself, making his murders all secret-like. It seemed to Ed that Charlie maybe should tell somebody, or else gun them down in front of witnesses if he wanted credit for killing people.
But then, Ed thought, shrugging, what the hell do I know?
At least, that was what Charlie was always telling him.
Rested, he capped his canteen and slowly worked his way up to his feet and got his crutch under his arm. His leg was bleeding a lot less, now that he was going at his own pace instead of trying to keep up with Charlie.
He thought he just might fool everybody, Charlie included, and live.
Slowly, he limped his way along the trail.
It didn’t look right. Not right at all.
Slocum moved his spyglass over a little to the right, then to the left, but there still were no signs of life to be seen in Cross Point. Just tumbleweeds in the streets, busted signs barely clinging to their posts, no people, no livestock.
“Bad news,” he said, lowering the spyglass.
“What?” Lydia asked.
“I don’t think anybody’s home,” he said grimly, and moved Tubac into a walk. “And you shut up,” he said to Billy Cree, who had regained consciousness about an hour out of town, but remained tied, facedown, across his saddle.
“Didn’t say nothin’, you goddamn sonofa—”
Slocum slapped him across the back with the ends of his reins, and Billy yelped, “Ouch!” instead of finishing his sentence.
“There’s a lady present, boy,” Slocum lectured, “so just mind your tongue.”
“Lady, my shiny pink ass,” Billy quipped.
Slocum answered him with another cut of the reins, to which Billy gave the usual response.
“Ouch!”
“Be nice, or when we get into town, I’ll turn her loose and look the other way,” Slocum said. “You gettin’ my point?”